1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to electric vehicles and more particularly to a foldable electrically powered vehicle such as personal mobility vehicle having improved characteristics.
2. Description of Related Art
The popularity of personal mobility vehicles (PMVs) has dramatically increased over the last several decades. Although conventional PMVs provide the desired mobility to an operator, they suffered from several disadvantages. Firstly, they were difficult to store during nonuse. In short, they are bulky to be stored in a small room. Secondly, they were difficult to transport in a car also due to bulkiness.
Prior art have attempted to solve the problems of the transportation and storage of a PMV by collapsing or folding same. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,720,995 B2 to Wu et al. discloses a foldable seat rack mountable between a body rack and a seat of a foldable motorized vehicle. It includes main supporting rods, upper rods, lower rods, a seat base, hooks, and an elastic element. Main supporting rods are fixed on two sides of the body rack respectively. Upper rods are pivoted on upper ends of the main supporting rods respectively. Lower rods are pivoted on middle portions of main supporting rods and a rear end of seat base respectively. Hooks are fixed on the upper ends of the main supporting rods respectively. The foldable seat base has a middle shaft. Middle portions on two sides of the seat base are opened with slide slots. Two ends of the middle shaft pass through the slide slots freely and are hooked by hooks. An elastic element is placed between the front end of the seat base, and the middle shaft.
However, the '995 patent has disadvantages including the seat rack being not structurally strong, no connection between the chassis plates and the upper rods (or the lower rods), and the folding process being difficult.
Thus, the need for improvement still exists.